# Inactivity



## Lorem Ipsum (Oct 1, 2009)

Now I’m sure that quite a few people who use particular boards sometimes have the same problem as me, which is why I’m posting here. The problem is inactivity, especially in the writing boards. 

This really annoys me sometimes, like some users writing and posting, wanting criticism and comments and just someone to say ‘yeah, I like it’ or ‘no, I don’t like it’, who just don’t get anything. At all. And that isn’t really any good for a writing board where people are supposed to be co-operating.

Now, this might sound bitchy and moany, but I really think there’s some solution to this. Maybe a ‘story swap’ scheme, like ‘you crit mine, I’ll crit yours’, or a ‘Featured Writer’ thing or something. I don’t know, but I think that anything that gives people the confidence to write more, or gives them the advice to write better next time is always good. But of course, this is just specialised for the writing boards, because it's something that I know only all too well.

Thoughts?


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## Tarvos (Oct 1, 2009)

i'd love to do it for the poetry/writing stuff, it's pretty much the reason i don't post there anymore


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## surskitty (Oct 1, 2009)

It's the sort of thing that can only be fixed by people commenting.

If you're complaining, you're probably part of the problem.


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## M&F (Oct 1, 2009)

TCoDf is, by far, more active than most places I've been to.

I'm not that much aware of how active the writing area specifically is, but if it's inactive, then that's actually pretty natural. Active writing areas, specially outside superactive forums, are a rarity. That's because interest in reading is something not many people have and many people lose easily. Not just out of sheer laziness, but sometimes, out of purely losing hope in writers because there's much more crap than there is good.

It is, though, acceptable to start making stuff that will help writers gain audience.

I know one that's fairly common, but badly exposed to losing efficiency over time. Contests.


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## Tailsy (Oct 2, 2009)

I'd be happy maintaining a writing contest if there were enough people interested, but...


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## Negrek (Oct 2, 2009)

> Now, this might sound bitchy and moany, but I really think there’s some solution to this. Maybe a ‘story swap’ scheme, like ‘you crit mine, I’ll crit yours’, or a ‘Featured Writer’ thing or something. I don’t know, but I think that anything that gives people the confidence to write more, or gives them the advice to write better next time is always good. But of course, this is just specialised for the writing boards, because it's something that I know only all too well.


Why don't you try setting these things up if you think they would be beneficial? The worst thing that could happen is that no one would use them.


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## Tarvos (Oct 2, 2009)

i'm interested in 'em


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## Lorem Ipsum (Oct 2, 2009)

Negrek: OK then, I will. 

Also, surskitty, I would comment, but with the rule in the writing forum generally being inferred as "write huge reviews" ("type up a fair bit about what it was that you liked so much, things that got you curious, particular quotes you really liked, characters you like and dislike, etc."), it can be a bit tedious.

This normally means that reviewing takes a long while to write, and generally puts people off of writing reviews. It also requires reading whole chapters or blocks of text, which, if they’re particularly long, can take forever.


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## Negrek (Oct 2, 2009)

> Also, surskitty, I would comment, but with the rule in the writing forum generally being inferred as "write huge reviews" ("type up a fair bit about what it was that you liked so much, things that got you curious, particular quotes you really liked, characters you like and dislike, etc."), it can be a bit tedious.


That may be the rule (didn't realize that, actually), but the number of people who follow it is, sadly, vanishingly small, so I'm not really sure it makes much of a difference. It also doesn't necessarily take all that much space/time to give an author more than an "It was good!" kind of review.



> It also requires reading whole chapters or blocks of text, which, if they’re particularly long, can take forever.


Perhaps you worded that wrong, but... you're complaining because you're expected to have read all of a chapter before you review it? o_O


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## Lorem Ipsum (Oct 2, 2009)

Yeah, I meant to say 'stories'.


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## Negrek (Oct 2, 2009)

Ah. No, there's no requirement that you have read all the chapters of a story before you review--though you've only read part of it, it would be helpful to give an indication of where you stopped before providing a review.


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## opaltiger (Oct 2, 2009)

Tailsy said:


> I'd be happy maintaining a writing contest if there were enough people interested, but...


I would be interested! As long as you don't have overly strict rules.


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## Ruby (Oct 2, 2009)

It appears this contest will have more judges than contestants.


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## M&F (Oct 2, 2009)

I'm used to seeing writing contests that operate on voting rather than judges.

But, depending on what kind of people would vote, judges could be a better option.


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## Tarvos (Oct 2, 2009)

i did contests where entrants had to judge other people's work; they couldn't allot marks for their own work, anyone who didn't got disqualified, comments necessary


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## Kratos Aurion (Oct 2, 2009)

Watershed said:


> i did contests where entrants had to judge other people's work; they couldn't allot marks for their own work, anyone who didn't got disqualified, comments necessary


Contests along these lines can be interesting; the art contest I ran last winter worked similarly (I was the only real judge, but people had to vote for the ones they wanted to move on and the votes didn't count unless they included constructive commentary). Giving and receiving potentially harsh criticism can occasionally scare a few new or overly-sensitive people away, but for those who do decide to "brave" it it can be helpful and go some way toward teaching people what actually goes into constructive comments/criticism.


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## ultraviolet (Oct 4, 2009)

I don't use the writing forum much, but I think if you guys were to have a writing competition of some sort you'd probably be better off having a vote and some kind of judge; if you have a vote you need less judges, which means more entries; if you have one or two judges, then you'd get some decent criticism. 
I might possibly get off my butt to compete in one of these things provided that the themes are relatively open-ended. 

I think a 'if you crit mine, I'll crit yours' system would work particularly well, but asking people to post long reviews is obviously going to deter them. I figure something along the lines of what you like, what you dislike and what is interesting would be a sufficient framework that could be added upon in; something like a few lines for each would probably be a minimum. 

but idk I don't exactly use this forum too much so you can all regard this as me blathering uselessly if you like


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## Tarvos (Oct 4, 2009)

yeah just write one or two paragraphs no whole novels are necessary unless you want to take the time idk


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## Hiikaru (Oct 30, 2009)

Why hasn't anyone suggested a club yet?

This hypothetical club could have a point system for critiquing writing, "moderators" whose job it is to write reviews, writing categories, featured writers, contests, you name it.

A point system would give you points for posting reviews, more or less depending on the length and/or quality, although quality would be more difficult to judge. Users could also potentially give you points for reviews they particularly liked. You lose points for posting your own writing. If you get too low down (either into the negatives or just a low number, depending on how many points you started with), you can't post anything again until you review something.

Ideally, this creates an environment in which people are both posting and reviewing writing.

The monitors could consider a prize or shop for high amounts of points, but I'm not sure what that would be on a forum.

Alternatively, if no one can be bothered to monitor a club, perhaps the simplest way to do this is a thread detailing some kind of system and leave everyone to work this out on their own. You could either ask users to keep track of points in their signature (possibly with a link to the thread), or go even simpler and have people that say in their signature "review my writing and I'll review yours". And there would be some kind of rule about minimum length, because if someone posts a three page review on your story, it's not really fair to ask you to do the same (and not fair to them if you don't unless you use points). Also it's not fair if they posted on a short story but to keep your word you'd have to read an entire novel.

You could even do something similar with a club in place - for extra points, users can write critiques on people outside of the club. 



> yeah just write one or two paragraphs no whole novels are necessary unless you want to take the time idk


If there were a system in place, obviously the length of the review should be somewhat dependent on the length of the piece in question. A 100 word drabble doesn't warrant an overly detailed review, but a three hundred page novel should get a little more attention.

Additionally, users who only write a couple of short paragraphs per review are likely being brief and uninteresting, and would get less points or whatever system is in place to prevent abuse. Someone who consistently writes organized and comprehensive reviews can't be compared to a person who shoves a few sentences in with their breakfast.

Or maybe you'd say "fewer" points, but I'm not using numbers and I'm imagining a larger quantity of points... You know, less ice cream, less wind, less points.



> Yeah, I meant to say 'stories'.


If it's chaptered, it may be beneficial, and even expected, to review each chapter (naturally this varies depending on how long the chapter is, but here I'm assuming that we're writing real chapters here, not a conglomeration of drabbles).

When reviewing an entire story, you have to go for a more general review, (kinda like reviewing an entire series or a writer as opposed to a single book) whereas in reviewing a single chapter, you can be more detailed about exactly what interested you (or not) about this particular chapter. 

Besides that, writers improve as they press onward with their story. In a 100k word novel that was written over the course of several years, reviewing the final chapter is significantly different than reviewing the first chapter, which the author may have already discovered many flaws in that they could fix if they rewrote it now. And with something like this, you can't _really_ review the entire story at once because the later additions would be so much better and different.


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## Tarvos (Nov 6, 2009)

> If there were a system in place, obviously the length of the review should be somewhat dependent on the length of the piece in question. A 100 word drabble doesn't warrant an overly detailed review, but a three hundred page novel should get a little more attention.
> 
> Additionally, users who only write a couple of short paragraphs per review are likely being brief and uninteresting, and would get less points or whatever system is in place to prevent abuse. Someone who consistently writes organized and comprehensive reviews can't be compared to a person who shoves a few sentences in with their breakfast.
> 
> Or maybe you'd say "fewer" points, but I'm not using numbers and I'm imagining a larger quantity of points... You know, less ice cream, less wind, less points.


A review should be as long as it needs to be. If you can concisely sum up your opinion in one paragraph, use one paragraph.


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## Hiikaru (Nov 6, 2009)

Watershed said:


> A review should be as long as it needs to be. If you can concisely sum up your opinion in one paragraph, use one paragraph.


That's true, but I don't think a few sentences is really sufficient for more than a drabble, in general.

Regardless, in this hypothetical point system, I don't think the points should really have anything to do with your quality. I mean, sure, an accurate and detailed review is certainly better than someone who's just saying the same thing and padding it to get more points, but I think that length is much easier and fairer to judge. Five paragraphs=five points (or whatever) is fast and there can be no qualms about fairness, because everyone is treated exactly the same way. Besides that, who wants to tell you that the review you spent two hours on sucks and will only get you one point? It wouldn't be fun to run the system that way.

Additionally, you should probably write a review the way you would prefer that someone else review your work. If you're perfectly happy receiving one paragraph reviews, then there should be no problem with you writing them that long. But you can't do that and then expect people to write lengthy and detailed reviews for _you_.

There could be something like forum karma in place where regular users could also give you points, and this would be based on how much they like it, or in other words, on quality.

A point system based on length of both writing and reviews rather than quality saves hassle and prevents abuse.


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